The Puffer Forum

As you know I have a fahaka puffer named Gilbert (changed it from Sol) and he isn't 1 bit aggressive when it comes to eating or anything he seems quite lazy and just lays there. I have tried "starving" him for up to 4 days and he still wont touch anything but bloodworms... he will eat ghost shrimp if they swim by though. He wont touch the other fish which he could easily destroy. Any ideas on why he is so passive? Maybe it is just his personality or will it come with time do you think? Any ideas? Or am I just over concerned?

Water parameters are perfect. Tank temp is at 76 it ranges usually between 76-80ish

You're offering him feeder fish? Or are those tankmates?

They are tankmates. Give it time and I bet you will be left with just a puffer in there. They get grumpy as they mature lol

Yeah those are all tank mates! lol They are friends not food! haha! But I hope it does come with time! I don't want a big wuss of a puffer! lol

You are giving his tankmates a death sentence imo. Hope you dont like them too much

Everyone one is different. As long as your water is good and he looks health I wouldnt worry about it. Just keep trying to introduce new foods and wait him out

Sounds good I am trying! he will nibble on an earth worm. I did feed him for 3 days and so I put an earth worm in there and when I woke up it was 3/4 gone so I am happy about that!

Get yourself a little crab and you will see how good these guys are at hunting

You could try a small live crawdad as well. I thought Manson my turg was gonna have a tankmate also...a yoyo loach I can't catch. Well, I saw the yoyo today and he has two chunks out of his back and a chunk missing from a fin. Wish I could catch him but my attempts has proved fruitless. Poor guy is just suffering. Manson is meaner than snot and so is my fahaka, Ares. Nothing even has a chance to hit the sand before Ares' murders it! Well, there was a crawdad that fought back that one time and attached itself to his lip...needless go say the crawdad lost that war.

My fahaka will complete ignore a cray when I first toss it in. But when I get home from work at 2am and flick on the kitchen light, which gives the living room some light but not enough to be annoyin that late at night, he will wake up and go on the hunt for one, and usually finds and eats it

Buzz is terrible lol. He will eat "some" of his food. He leaves the top half of crayfish, takes only a bite out of worms, but then will eat ghost shrimp whole. My wife got a little Malawi Kenyi Cichlid, and decided she would look good in the tank, but sure enough, we woke up this morning and a chunk was gone out of the little cichlid's head. No luck with dead foods yet unless they are dead ghost or cherry shrimp.

Well I will try that! hes a very patient hunter but he does eat! He had like 3/4 of a blood worm cube and like half a canadian night crawler! i didnt see him eat it but my bichir eats blood worms and nothing else so i mean the worms are cheap and easy to feed! But he absolutely loves meal worms more than anything!

I actually just created a new thread asking about mealworms. I'm trying to figure out why so many people say they are difficult for puffers to digest. The reason is chitin, which makes their exoskeleton hard, but shrimp, crays, clams, snails, etc. all have it too. They eat fish bones too lol. Anyway, have you ever had any problems as a result of feeding mealworms? I just cut off the head since I learned with my leopard gecko that they can chew into the stomach if they don't die when eaten.

Well they drown before they get the chance to even get at him! lol

True, true. On the flip side, I've found earthworms still alive after several days. Here I thought they had been eaten, but there they were wiggling around under a log, thinking they had escaped. Likely story lol.